Someone recently suggested that they “stalked” me across multiple web services and it got me to thinking which services I have actually signed up to and which I continue to use. Between then and now, my cat died, a friend’s house burnt down and another friend had her PhD draft[1] torn to shreds, so I didn’t quite get to it. It seems to have been A Bad Week (TM) after the high at the beginning with my sister’s graduation.
Below, I have listed most of the social networking sites I use or that are well known. Social networking websites are an interesting phenomena. I find myself rather bemused at times, but do see their attractions. I see myself as a peripheral participant in most of them, and sometimes that leads to a sense of voyeurism that is kind of weird. I have a horror of being watched so perhaps it’s not surprising that I tend to stick to the sidelines when I do get involved.
I’ve broken it up into Things I don’t use, Things I do use and Other things I have used but don’t really keep up with. I think I got them all, but who knows where I’ve signed up in the past.
Things I don’t use:
Facebook, MySpace and Friendster. Oh, and SecondLife
The big three. Okay, maybe Friendster is old news, but I didn’t get into it, seemed way too much like the ‘cool kids’ hangout and I was never a cool kid. I think, initially, I felt the same way about MySpace and then Facebook. Even though Facebook is fairly mainstream now, I do not have an account and will not sign up. I do not like some of their terms of service and I tend to read those kinds of things. I’m under all sorts of peer pressure to join, but I’m hearing from one or two people that they are starting to delete their Facebook profiles, so it seems the tide may be turning and we should be watching for the Next Big Thing.
I’m also not in Secondlife. I really do have enough trouble keeping up with this life. I did try to sign up once, but found it way to difficult to choose a “last name”. It seemed really bizarre that I couldn’t choose my name except from a list and there was all sorts of implications that may come with names. Part of the course I teach talks about naming and identity and I found I just couldn’t take on a name that didn’t fit my identity or my perception of it. There is a back story to this in that I did choose my name[2] and so I never completed the process.
Things I do use:
Flickr, Delicious, Stumbleupon, Citeulike, Twitter, Linkedin, WikiEducator, Me.Edu.Au[3]
Most of these services off something much more useful to me personally. Flickr, of course, hosts the multitude of pictures I took of Roofrack for my daughter in Toronto. It was the easiest way of making sure she missed him less. Now we have a nice memorial to him. I like that the privacy settings allow us to share just among family or among friends. Privacy is important, after all, even for those of us who choose to live large on the ‘net[4].
Delicious is probably the site I have been with the longest (except for blogger which I hardly use any more) although CiteULike comes a close second. Bookmarking sites are the obvious choice of people who need to refind information. I was quite annoyed with myself earlier this year when I didn’t bookmark all the resources I was using for a paper on digital literacy. I suppose the academic process of pasting them into the paper reference list stood well enough, but I now have to open that document to find things. I didn’t make the same mistake with the nocleanfeed information which I’ll be using for my next paper.
Stumbleupon is not really something I got into in a great way. I started using it, but it was too random in the results[5]. I still ocassionally have a play with it, when I need a bit of intellectual downtime, so maybe over the next few weeks of my holidays I’ll experiment a bit more.
CiteULike is like Delicious for academics. Unless you need to find citations to use in research papers, it’s probably not worth investigating. It is good for discovering papers you didn’t know about, but unless you also have access to the papers via a library, it’s use is limited.
Twitter is a funny one. I get it, but I don’t. I sometimes feel that I’m not interesting enough to be there[6]. It’s that issue of privacy. How much do I really want to share? How many times can one tweet “playing with my computer on my verandah”? Oh look, there’s the postman. Is that more interesting?
Linkedin is another funny one. I’m on there, but not sure why. Perhaps over the next few months with changes being slated at work, I may find this one much more useful.
WikiEducator is a great resource/wiki/community for developing and sharing open educational resources. It’s got a lot going for it, but sometimes I think that my stuff isn’t quite what needs to be in there. I do have to finish developing my rubrics resource there and I plan to over the break, but during most of the year, I’m flat out with my teaching. I also plan[7] to get my informatics course work up there to give people resources for teaching about the newer uses of the web and keeping up to date with developments. I have already released that under a CC licence, but still need to work on it.
Me.Edu.Au is almost like Facebook for educators. I was a little perturbed when I just looked at it. The focus on education is what initially drew me there, but that was a few years ago, before it got so ‘socially networking’. I haven’t actually logged into this, so maybe that will be this afternoon’s activity.
Other things I have used (signed up for) but don’t really keep up with
Livejournal, YouTube, Blogger, Wikipedia
Livejournal was actually my second social networking site after blogger and both of these are not under my real name. This goes back to 2002 when it was all new. They are part of my personal space even though I had the same reaction I currently have to twitter. I guess I’m just not a diarying person.
I have signed up for YouTube, but I was a bit late as I couldn’t get my real name and I haven’t put anything there yet. I plan to move to a more blended version of my course next year and have short lecturettes with all the “facts” students so want. I hope this will satisfy the unengaged and allow the rest of us to get on with the job of learning. When I finally get something up there, I’ll post about it here.
I also signed up for Wikipedia, but have never edited there. I’m in the business of ‘original research’ so I find it difficult to determine what I could add. I may work it out one day, but I think I have enough to do at the moment.
So there you have it. These are the main social networking sites that I frequent or have frenquented or refuse to frequent. On most of my frequently visited sites, I am AlisonRuth (some without capitals). On YouTube, I think I am IAmAlisonRuth[8]. The others I’m not telling because I do like a wee bit of privacy and space to do the more silly things that I sometimes find myself doing.
- actually, just the first sentence of it, but where do you go from there? [↩]
- by deed poll but that seems a lifetime ago [↩]
- I just love that “ay you” at then end of our web addresses [↩]
- although I think I live small on the ‘net, but more on that below [↩]
- maybe I hadn’t set it up right, but I like a bit more purpose in my browsing [↩]
- that is said with only a hint of sarcasm [↩]
- in a very fuzzy way [↩]
- because alisonruth there was a 14 year old from somewhere in the US [↩]
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socialnetworking